The objective of the project is to develop a model based method for automatic 3D segmentation of multiple anatomic objects in medical image volumes. The knowledge based segmentation of organs will open up new possibilities in the quantitative radiology, radiation therapy and operation planning. The main focus of this DFG project is the improvement and extension of the statistical shape models with probabilistic point correspondences that had been developed in a previous project by our research group. The probabilistic statistical shape model that already holds the information about the shape of an organ will be extended to a probabilistic shape and appearance model that additionally contains knowledge about the local appearance of organs and the global neighborhood relations between them. Furthermore the probabilistic shape and appearance models will be integrated in an advanced level set segmentation approach to enable a robust and flexible multi-object segmentation of organ ensembles in 3D image volumes.

This projekt is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG: HA 2355/7-2).